I am considering purchasing a Foredom TXH440 to use primarily for shaping furniture projects and am curious if it is possible to use inflatable ball and drum sanders with the 44T hand piece or if this is discouraged. Any advice would be appreciated.Thanks,Bill

10 replies so far

Thats the Heavy Duty Foredom with a DC permanent magnet motor rated at 1/3 hp.The handpiece suppied with that tool has both 1/8” and 1/4” collets so if your drum has a 1/4” shaft it might work.I say Might because the drum will have to withstand 15,000 RPM. I never saw one that would, but YMMV.In any case, that’s a very nice tool for carving type work.

-- Michael :-{| Don't anthropomorphise your tools, they hate it when you do that.

Yes a friend of mine has a foredom and I tried it and decided to get one but found that the mastercarver was cheaper and had a larger motor than his has. Also I can still get foredom tips and they fit the mastercarver. I bought three hand pieces with my mastercarver. Small one, Larger one (1/4” chuck that operates with a key , just like a drill motor) and a carving tool. The carving tool is the one I use most and is like a mini jack hammer with gouges in it that make small wood carvings a simple and easy thing to do. I chose not to get a foot speed controller because I find it uncomfortable to hold my foot at a certain position for long periods. Wecheer is yet another brand out there. Grizzly has a cheaper one that I would have tried if I had heard of it before I made my purchase. I am not sure if Harbor Freight has one also. If you get one ,I took the advice of Mastercarver and purchased extra internal flex drives. As it turns out I did break one and I was glad of the spare I had on hand.http://www.woodcarverssupply.com/NEW-1_2-HP-MASTERCARVER-BENCHTOP-BASIC-SET/productinfo/797432/

Jim, thanks for the information on the master carver. Regarding the master carver, if you did a side by side comparison with the Foredom do you notice any difference in quality or performance? I also contacted the manufacturer of the inflatable sanding balls and they said they would work fine as long as the rpm was kept below 3500. This seems to be on the low end of the flex shaft tools.Thanks again for the advice.